


stop the world (i wanna get off with you)

by Talls



Category: MASH (TV), Star Trek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pon Farr, T'hy'la, Telepathic Bond, Telepathic Sex, Vulcan Hand Sensitivity, you absolutely need to know about mash though haha, you don't have to know about Star Trek!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:09:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29782137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talls/pseuds/Talls
Summary: “Benjamin Franklin Hawkeye Pierce,” BJ croons in your ear. “So quick to offer your food and your socks and your opinions. I wonder what other intimacies you would offer if I asked,” he breathes as your toes curl in your regulation boots.“Which ones did you want?” you answer, wow, so stupidly, so incredibly stupidly. BJ smiles at you, his expression almost wolfish, and you shiver. It feels like you’re in a daze, like you’ve entered a mirror universe where BJ looks and talks even more like a pinup holo than usual.-In which BJ starts losing some of that steely Vulcan control, and Hawkeye pokes his nose in places where he only technically belongs.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 13
Kudos: 50





	stop the world (i wanna get off with you)

**Author's Note:**

> truly, this was very very inspired by davidfoley's Tumblr art about star mash the final frontier which you can find [here](https://kippdipp.tumblr.com/post/632559156307591168/mash-trek-star-mash-space-the-final)  
> special thanks to a.s. who beta'd this and also is the guiding light of my life. they have also recently published the beginning of their own multi chapter fic about peg/bigelow which is such a big brain take, so everyone should go read that too!!
> 
> you do not need to know much/anything about star trek to understand this fic, I promise!!! without further adieu, I hope you enjoy this story :)

You stare blankly at the replicator as it deposits a scoop of baked beans and toast on your tray. God, what you would do for a real meal. Or any real food at all. A single egg. One crisp red apple. You think you’d defect to the Romulans if they offered you better rations, but you hear they’re faring worse over there, culinarily speaking. 

You shouldn’t be on a Galactic Federation ship. You shouldn’t be in outer space at all. You were living a perfectly decent life on Earth, tending to your new patients in New York, before this interminable intergalactic war snatched you up in its cosmic jaws and began to chew you up. Federation authorities try to justify the surgeon’s draft by saying doctors never really see combat, even when they warp to the front. After all, hospital ships don’t get shot at. Usually. 

Please. 

You pour yourself a mug of coffee with one cream and two sugars, wincing at both the lukewarm temperature and vaguely metallic aftertaste that all replicator food leaves in your mouth. God, you hate it out here. You miss Earth, the way gravity and sunlight weren’t artificial, the way you could drive into a city and eat food in a restaurant, the way you could stand in the rain and let it soak through your civilian clothes. 

The only solace out here is the people you’ve found, but even they leave you hanging sometimes. Like this morning. You take your coffee and look around the mess to see who you can sit with. BJ is nowhere to be seen in the mess, which is surprising because you were sure he had gone before you, ditching you instead of waiting like he usually does. Instead you spot Margaret, your head nurse and best enemy, eating with her new wife. You turn away, not wanting to intrude, but Helen waves you over. 

“Hi, Hawkeye, you think you could keep Margaret company for me? I forgot to finish a batch of reports, and I’d hate to think of her sitting alone.” 

“I’m honored you thought of me, Helen. Of course I’ll keep your beautiful wife company this morning.” 

“Helen, you’ll pay for this,” Margaret says flatly. Helen chuckles deviously and presses a quick kiss on her forehead in fond farewell. 

“Be good, you two,” Helen says, before leaving with her tray. 

“Morning, Margaret,” you say, taking Helen’s vacated seat. She nods at you in greeting. 

“Pierce,” she says in her typical stern fashion. “Where’s your taller half?” 

“I don’t know,” you say, looking around the mess to spot BJ. “I thought he was here, but maybe he finished eating early.” 

“How’d you sleep?” she asks, genuine concern in her voice. The hospital had to warp to a different quadrant yesterday, patching up a civilian transport that got caught in the crossfire between Federation and Romulan ships near the Outer Zone. You spent most of the day in the OR, synthesizing new skin for chemical burn victims and reattaching limbs to whatever survivors you could find. 

“Like the damned. I didn’t dream once,” you say, poking at your tray. “You?” 

“I had a headache, but Helen gave me a neck massage,” she brags. You glare at her. 

“You don’t have to rub your newly-wedded bliss in all of our faces all the time,” you say pointedly. 

“I know I don't have to - I want to,” she clarifies and you grin at her, before poking at your food. 

“Replicator food leaves something to be desired, doesn’t it?” 

“Sure, until the replicators go down, and we have to make do with dehydrated rations again,” she points out, and you wince. 

“Don’t remind me, and definitely don’t jinx it,” you say. 

“You believe in that superstitious mumbo-jumbo?” she asks, amused. You raise your eyebrows at her. 

“You wanna risk it?” You stare at each other for a beat, before you both knock on wood and look down at your trays, wearing matching smiles. 

“Am I interrupting something?” BJ asks from behind you, and you turn, delighted. 

“Beej!” you say, staring up at his tall silhouette. “There you are!” BJ raises one of his eyebrows at you. He’s holding himself stiffly, more in accordance with his Vulcan heritage in posture and expression than usual. He doesn’t usually get uptight like this unless he’s around full-blooded Vulcans who aren’t Charles. In fact, if it wasn’t for his pointy ears, green blood, and quiet emotional control, people would assume BJ was fully human, which both delights BJ and eats away at him in the nighttime. 

“I thought we were getting breakfast together this morning,” he says, his voice inscrutable. “I felt like a jilted prom date waiting at your door.” It sounds like he should be joking, but there’s a real edge underneath the words. 

“I did too! I stood around in the hall for twenty minutes before I just assumed you came without me.” He doesn’t seem to believe you. It’s strange for you to not be on the same wavelength as him, and this new distance discomfits you. 

“I see,” he says, staring daggers at the table. His knuckles are white on his tray, and you notice his fingers digging into the plastic, creating visible indents.

“Did you want to sit down?” you ask, gesturing to the seat next to you. He flicks his eyes at Margaret and then back at you. 

“No, I think I’ll leave you to it,” he says, turning on his heel and walking away. On his way out, he dumps his tray, all his food uneaten, which is insane because the replicators were programmed with tater tots today, Beej’s favorite.

“What the hell?” you ask, turning to Margaret with wide eyes. “Do you know what that’s about?” 

“I couldn’t tell you,” Margaret says with concern in her voice, as she stares at where he walked. 

“I’ve never seen him get like that,” you say. “What set him off?” 

“Yesterday was long for all of us,” she offers in explanation. “He probably overslept and wasn’t actually that hungry.” 

“Sure,” you say slowly, looking back at where you last saw him. It would make sense, but BJ has seen so much worse, and he had been completely normal after surgery yesterday when you were walking back to your adjoining quarters. 

You plan to ask him what that was about when you join him in post-op for the beta shift, but he’s completely normal by then, joking around with you and whistling while he fills out reports. 

“Did you sleep well last night?” you ask. 

“Like a log. I was wiped after yesterday,” he says. You nod. 

“Yeah, it wasn’t pretty, huh?” 

“Never is,” BJ says nonchalantly. You blink at him a few times before dropping this tack. Clearly the problem from this morning wasn’t about yesterday. 

“You know, I probably could have waited another ten minutes this morning,” you offer. He cuts a fond look at you. 

“Don't worry about it,” he says. “I was just in a weird mood, that’s all.” 

“Right. Good,” you say, hoping you don’t sound as unconvinced as you feel. 

“Seriously, Hawk.” He leans closer to you and puts a reassuring hand on your arm, warm through the fabric. “I’m fine. I’ll see you after you finish your shift?” 

“Of course, I have a chess game to stalemate!” 

“Stalemate, huh? Shooting for the moon?” 

“Well, I may be in the gutter, but I am looking at the stars,” you respond. 

“Oscar Wilde,” he says, smiling at you. He sways closer to you, and you abruptly become aware of the heat he puts out, his core body temperature higher than most humans. His hand slides down your arm a bit and he leans closer, enough that you could probably tilt your head and-

“Hi, Hawkeye,” Nurse Bigelow says from behind you. You spin around to greet them. 

“Bigelow!” you exclaim, surprised. “I thought you were on shore leave until next week.” 

“I thought I was too, but then we warped away from the planet and Potter offered me a deferred leave instead,” they say. 

“All the better for us,” you say, smiling widely at them. They smile but crinkle their brows in confusion. 

“Who’s us?” they ask. You turn around to BJ, and then turn around again when you realize BJ is nowhere to be seen. 

“BJ was just here,” you say plaintively.

“He left pretty quickly, it seemed like he remembered something he had to do somewhere else,” they offer. A patient moans in one of the beds, and they turn away to take care of him. You grab the datapad at the foot of his bed and try to keep your mind off of BJ's disappearing act for the rest of the shift. 

You knock on his door for far too long after shift for that chess game, but he either isn’t in his room, or he’s just ignoring you. You try pinging him on the communicator, but he doesn’t pick up then either. You end up pestering Mulcahy in the botanical garden, which he bears with a constant steady grace as always. 

Mulcahy’s position onboard is as nebulous as it is critical. He isn’t a medical practitioner, but he’s undeniably good to have around in an OR, his empathic and psionic abilities allowing him to soothe resistant patients, and unerringly predict what tool you’ll need next in surgery. He got his degree from Starfleet in Intergalactic Cultural Studies, so he’s who you go to when patients have specific cultural or religious rituals that need to be performed. He’s also fun to drink with, and, unlike most other Betazoids, he sees the value in diplomacy, which, combined with his empathic abilities, makes him miraculously good at providing counsel when you’re in crisis.

“Hawkeye, is it possible he’s looking for a bit of space?” he asks, calmly trimming a bonsai tree. “It’s very easy to develop cabin fever on a ship of this size. You two tend to spend more time together than anyone else here, maybe he’s just seeking a bit of privacy.” 

“I see your point, but usually when BJ needs space, he says it to my face, along with a litany of exactly what I’ve done to annoy him.” Mulcahy chuckles and you grin at him. He’s always a balm on your troubled mind. 

“I’m sure you two will figure it out. You always do,” Mulcahy says, with good humor and a healthy dose of finality. “I’d advise you to be patient.” 

“Haven’t you heard?” you ask. “Doctors make the worst patients.” 

Despite Mulcahy’s advice, you wait outside BJ’s cabin for thirty minutes before dinner, scuffing your boots on the floor where a welcome mat would sit if you were home, avoiding the eyes of people who walk by. Eventually you give up, trudging to the mess with your hands in your pockets. 

You don’t know what’s going on with him. You don’t know why he’d be acting this way. 

“Are you going to eat your pudding, Hawkeye?” Radar asks, looking over at your tray. You turn to him from where you’re slumped with your head on your hand. 

“No, go wild,” you say, and he does, pulling the tray over and devouring it with the gusto of the young and starving. 

Radar was born on a ship, the Starship Iowa. His mother and his uncle were the Captain and Chief Engineer respectively, so Radar grew up learning the insides of a ship better than most Generals ever do. He’s a prodigy - he has a rare knack for knowing what's about to go wrong in deep space, and he’s better at coordinating the logistics of a hospital than anyone you worked with planetside. He shouldn’t be out here, in the middle of a war -- he’s too young for it -- but you won’t deny that he’s indispensable, and there’s no safer place in outer space for him to be than a hospital ship. 

“Your loss,” Potter says, gesturing to your forsaken pudding. “They did a great job with the chocolate today. It almost tastes like what cocoa powder smells like.” 

“Colonel, stop, I’ll drool,” you say wryly, pushing your meatloaf around. 

“What’s eating you, Pierce?” he asks. 

“BJ. He’s been weird all day. I think he’s been avoiding me, but I can’t figure out why.” 

“Maybe he got some bad news from that fiancé of his,” Potter offers. You consider it. It’s definitely possible, but you don’t know what she could have said that would make him specifically avoid you.

“Maybe. Radar, has he heard anything from Peg?” you ask. 

“I can’t tell you that,” Radar yelps, outraged. “That’d be a breach of privacy and a violation of his rights as a Federation citizen.” 

“I won’t tell,” Potter says. 

“Oh, well then, no, there hasn’t been anything from Peg, other than the standard weekly report she types up, but there wasn’t anything in that that’d set him off,” Radar says, dropping the indignant schtick immediately. 

“Radar, you’re the best little sneak in the Federation,” Potter says fondly. 

You furrow your brows and shake your head. “It just doesn’t make sense.” 

“You’ll have the opportunity to ask him about it in Alpha shift tomorrow,” Potter says. “You’re both being sent to another mobile surgical hospital in the area to debut some of the new skin graft techniques you’ve been working on.” 

“Goodie,” you say. “I’ll interrogate him then.” 

You leave the rest of your tray with Radar, who takes it happily. On your way back to your cabin, you run into Klinger, covered in what appears to be a fast-spreading rash, but reveals itself to be body-paint under your keen surgeon’s eye. 

“Nice try, Klinger, but Andorian pox doesn’t smear when you itch it,” you say, as you walk past them. They immediately stop scratching. 

“I’m never gonna get off this boat,” they say. 

“You’ll make it one day champ,” you say, walking into your room. 

“I live for your support,” they call back at you. The door slides behind you and you are alone. You sit on your bunk and try to call BJ one last time. No answer. 

Fine then. You’ll just get pissed at him tomorrow. 

*

The next morning you wake up with warfare on the mind. BJ’s being a dick for no reason, and you really don’t have the patience for it. You skip breakfast entirely, waiting outside the transporter room fifteen minutes early to catch him. When you do see him, he looks so miserable you almost forget your anger. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his normally fluffy wavy hair is greasy and limp against his forehead. He looks like he hasn’t shaved either, and the combination of that and the way his clothes seem to hang off of him paints an unsettling picture. 

“You look terrible,” you say, the words coming to you unbidden. “I actually don’t think I’ve ever seen you look worse.” BJ ignores you, brushing by to walk into the transporter room. “You’re seriously not going to apologize for ditching me yesterday? What happened to our chess game?” 

“I thought you weren’t interested,” BJ says in a Vulcan flat tone, staring straight ahead. “Bigelow is back in town, aren’t they?” 

“Sure, but I don’t play chess with Bigelow,” you respond. BJ’s lip curls in contempt. 

“Right. Lieutenant,” BJ says, turning to the transporter technician, “prepare for transport.” 

“We can’t quite yet, sir, we’re still waiting on Major Burns,” the technician says. You look up and groan at the ceiling. Burns was supposed to be transferred to a planetside hospital a month ago, but his paperwork keeps getting delayed, so in the meantime he’s been hanging around making everyone’s life miserable. 

“You’re telling me we have to travel with Frank Burns?” BJ asks belligerently. 

“Hey, it’s not their fault we’re stuck with the lousiest doctor in the galaxy,” you say. 

“He shouldn’t be here,” BJ growls, and you cut a surprised look at the unbridled aggression in his words. “He shouldn’t be allowed to practice medicine at all.” 

“Look, you couldn’t preach to a louder choir, but these are just a few of the indignities that we’re forced to endure in this miserable slog-” 

“Whining again, Pierce?” Burns says, walking in with a sneer on his face. “How very like you to force your problems onto everyone else.” 

“Oh, go shove it up your nose, Frank,” you fire back. 

“Or someplace a little less forgiving,” BJ appends. 

“What’s the issue, Pierce? Jealous that I’m getting transferred to a position that befits my surgical talents, and you’re stuck here on this miserable ship for the foreseeable future?” 

“Frank, shut up or I’ll make you,” BJ bites. 

“Is that a threat?” Frank shrieks in less-than-righteous indignation. “Are you threatening me?” 

“It’s not a threat, just a sternly worded guideline,” you supply. 

“No, it was a threat,” BJ says, a cruel edge in his tone, and you rear back a little bit. BJ never contradicts the rule of ‘yes, and’ with you, and especially not in front of Frank. The last time you broke ranks in front of Frank, you didn’t talk for three days. “Shut up or I’ll break you in inconvenient places.” 

“What happened to Vulcan pacifism and strict logic?” Frank asks, aghast, and the world must be ending, because you and Frank Burns are suddenly on the same page. 

“This is your last warning, Burns,” BJ says, and there’s something cool and dangerous in his tone that makes your hair stand on end. You suddenly realize that BJ isn’t even close to joking right now. 

“Hey, Frank, maybe you oughta lay off,” you say nervously. 

“That is just like you, siding with him like this. You degenerates are all the same, harassing honest people who believe in the war effort.” 

“No, I’m serious, Frank, now really isn’t the time,” you warn, watching the tension in BJ’s jaw wind tighter and tighter. 

“Oh please. You’re both always looking down on me because I happen to believe in the principles of freedom that govern this great Federation, even though you both owe the Federation everything. If something as strange as Hunnicutt existed on Romulus, they would have killed him in his childhood, like the savages they are.” 

“That’s it,” BJ snaps, reaching out and grabbing Frank by the throat, lifting him bodily into the air. The transport technician yelps and ducks under the console. 

“Hey, BJ, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” you shout, grabbing at his arm. He shakes you off easily, as Frank claws at his hand, his face turning an alarming shade of purple. 

“I warned him,” BJ snaps, shaking Frank a little bit in the air as his feet dangle. You try to pry BJ’s fingers from Frank’s throat, but his grip is like iron. 

You pull your communicator out of your pocket and place a call. “Mulcahy, I need you to get down to the transporter room, right now! BJ’s gone crazy, he attacked Frank!” 

“Of course, Hawkeye,” you hear. 

“Pierce, help me,” Frank whines.

“I’m trying, Frank, just stop kicking,” you say, trying to grab at his flailing legs so his neck isn’t holding all his weight. 

“You will not ever speak to me or Hawkeye in this tone again,” BJ commands, his voice shaking with fury. “Do you understand me?” 

“BJ, please stop, this isn’t worth it, you’re acting like a crazy person,” you plead, trying to grab his arm again. 

“Put me down, you pointy-eared freak,” Frank chokes out. In the split second before BJ moves, you get the strangest feeling, like the ship has frozen to a halt in the dead of space, like the grav-simulators are breaking and you are weightless, waiting for the fall.

Then, BJ throws Frank across the room. He crashes against the wall and slides down with a sick thump. 

“Shit!” you curse, running to Frank’s side. His head isn’t bleeding, but there’s a sizable bump developing, and fingerprint bruises are starting to show up on his neck already. You turn to see BJ advancing on the two of you, a dangerous expression on his face. You spring up into his path before he can do any more damage. 

“Get out of the way,” BJ says, his eyes skipping over you as he looks at Frank’s prone form. 

“No,” you say, lurching to the side when he tries to sidestep you. “BJ, whatever this is, it’s not you, please, snap out of it.” 

“I said, get out of the way, Hawkeye,” BJ growls, something furious in his stance. 

“Oh god,” Frank moans behind you. “Did you see that? He’s crazy!” 

“Will you shut up?” you hiss back at him. “You’re not making this easy on me.” 

“Hawkeye, I’m giving you three seconds to get out of my way,” BJ says in a flat, dangerous voice. You swallow heavily but stand your ground. “One.” 

You wince away from him, bracing yourself. “Two.” Your eyes shut completely. 

Nothing happens. You pry one of your eyes open, and BJ is still there, though now with a strangled expression on his face. Then, he shakes a bit and crumples to the ground, revealing Mulcahy behind him, holding his hand on BJ’s neck. 

“Sleep, BJ,” Mulcahy says, dropping his hand, and BJ’s eyes shut. You gasp in relief, your heart stumbling over itself. 

“Mulcahy, I think you may have just saved my life,” you say, the aftershocks of what just happened running through you. “You definitely just saved Frank’s.” The man in question scrambles to his feet and runs out of the room in terror. 

“I’m glad you called when you did. I fear I may have dismissed your very valid concerns a bit too hastily.”

“Don't worry about it, even I didn’t see this coming,” you say, wiping your hands over your face. 

“I’ll take him to Colonel Potter’s office,” he says, hoisting BJ into a fireman’s carry. “I’d advise you to get some rest. Your hands are shaking.” 

You look down at your hands and realize that he’s right - they’re trembling like leaves in fall. 

“It’ll be alright, Hawkeye,” he says, and you feel a gentle soothing touch skimming the surface of your thoughts. “You should get to bed.” 

You don’t know what else to do, so you follow his instructions. The skin graft demonstration will keep. 

*

That night you dream in fits and starts. You dream of a vast unforgiving desert, with winds so hot you feel your skin stinging. You wander barefoot between the scrub brush for hours, feeling tongues of flame licking at your bare soles, the sun beating down on your back in the middle of an orange sky. You feel a cavernous hunger in your belly, an aching hollowness that demands to be filled. 

You stumble across an oasis and fall to your knees, but your reflection in the water doesn’t look a thing like you. You look like a ravening beast, your eyes wild and cheeks sunken. You stumble back from the lip of the water and then you are tumbling down a hill, your body falling limp like a ragdoll, the world spinning around you wildly. You land flat on your back, and stare up into a bright blue sky. 

You scramble up onto your feet and your toes dig into white sand. You are standing on a beach in front of a vast blue ocean, with nobody else in sight. You step forward and the water recedes, and then keeps receding until there’s almost no water in sight at all. Then you see it, a massive wall of blue building and building in the distance. You turn to run, but before you can get away, the ocean crashes on top of you, and you are crushed under the unrelenting pressure. You can’t tell up from down and you flail desperately for any lifeline, anything to grab onto. You feel something wrap around your wrist, and you claw at it, dragging yourself out of the water into- 

BJ’s room on the ship. You are sitting next to BJ on his bed, shoulders overlapping, laughing about something you can’t remember. His eyes are bright and there’s a chess board lying neglected on the floor next to you, from when you lost your fourth game and threw it off the bed. 

This isn’t just a dream, you realize. This is a memory, careworn with near-constant recollection. 

In this memory, you are two weeks into your burgeoning friendship with the new half-Vulcan on the ship, and you are so smitten you can’t see straight. BJ feels like he was made to fill in the gaps in your sentences, the spaces between your heartbeats. He graduated from the new guy around here to your partner in crime in the span of one day of horrible triage, four conversations and far too much alcohol in the dead of night, and now you almost can’t imagine what your life looked like without him. 

In the dream, you turn to him, and he turns to you at the same moment, so your noses are almost touching. You smile dopily at him, at his wonderful straight nose, his big blue eyes, his infuriating little smirk. It feels like he’s brought the sunshine from San Francisco onboard, warming you even in the cold void of outer space. 

“How do Vulcans kiss?” you ask boldly in the memory, too drunk to feel embarrassed. BJ blinks at you owlishly.

“Why do you want to know?” he asks in response, which now that you think of it, was really a very appropriate question at the time, if inconvenient for you. 

At the time, you had to think fast, but now the words come easily to you, like a line in a script. “Well, what if I do it by accident? I don’t want to harass you in the workplace or anything.” 

“You want to know how Vulcans kiss because you want to make sure that you never accidentally kiss me,” BJ says, tone flat. You nod, because it’s better than the truth, which was that you’re going to touch yourself thinking about it for the rest of your years-long acquaintance. 

“Sure,” you respond. “Wouldn’t want to field any angry calls from your beautiful Vulcan fiancé.” 

“Right,” BJ says shortly, probably because it’s a bad idea to hit on his soon-to-be wife. 

“Come on,” you insist. “How would you kiss Peg if she was here?” BJ swallows heavily, and then reaches out to you, so he’s holding your wrist delicately. This is your favorite part. 

“We kiss with our hands,” he says in the dream, in the same soft but instructive tone you remember with crystal clarity. “Vulcans have sensitive hands, which is why we aren’t very touchy people.” 

“You touch me all the time,” you interrupt, and he smiles at you fondly 

“Well, I was raised Terran,” he says, “and also you’re my best friend.” He arranges your hand until you’re holding out two fingers, and then runs his own two fingers along yours. You shiver against him. 

“That’s how you kiss?” you ask in a daze, as he does it again, and again, and again. You remember you couldn’t even think at the time, all of your nerve endings fried by his touch. It felt like pure bliss, up until you remembered you were probably enjoying yourself too much. “Peg, I mean. That’s how you kiss Peg?” 

In real life, BJ pulls his hand away from you. “Yes,” he says, his voice uneven. “That’s how I’d kiss Peg.” Then, he tells you he needs to meditate, and you walk to your room and bring yourself off with a blind desperate urgency that you never quite feel again. In your memory, you resolve to never speak of the moment again, though you will relive it over and over in the privacy of your bunk, wrapping your fingers around each other in a pale imitation of his touch. 

In the dream, however, BJ doesn’t pull away from you. Instead, he hooks your fingers together even more securely. You blink at him in confusion as the scene derails itself. 

“What if there was no Peg?” the BJ from your dream whispers. “Would you have taught me how humans kiss?” This isn’t your BJ, you know that, it’s just your subconscious trying to give you what you can’t have, but you play along anyway.

“You already know how humans kiss,” you tease, brushing your nose against his. He leans in until your foreheads are touching. The room begins to fall apart around you, leaving you and him alone on his bed, trapped in the center of a vast black abyss. 

“Something’s coming, Hawkeye. I’m scared,” he whispers. 

“What’s coming, BJ?” you ask, a pit opening in the bottom of your stomach. BJ shakes his head, and his skin begins to lose color, the lines of his body greying and blending into the darkness behind him. “BJ? BJ, stay with me.” 

Then you are all alone in the darkness, drifting. You look up and around you, but you’re the only speck of color in a limitless abyss. You feel the hunger of before, but instead of being inside of you, you feel it around you. You suddenly understand, with the striking clarity you only find in dreams, that the darkness wants to consume you, wants to embed you into every aspect of it, wants you more desperately than anything it has ever seen before. You reach out, and feel the darkness like velvet on your palm. 

For a second, you want desperately to be devoured. Then you fade away entirely, and your dream is replaced with the oblivion of deep sleep. 

*

You haven’t seen BJ in three days. After the Incident, which is how you’ve been referring to it in your head, Mulcahy, Charles and BJ disappeared into Potter’s office for six hours, and then, without any explanation, put BJ on cabin arrest and redirected the ship to Vulcan. 

Overnight, everyone on the surgical staff started pretending like BJ was on a brief vacation, even though he’s been locked in his room in solitary confinement. Duty logs have been updated, rumors have died down, and you still have no idea what the hell is going on with the guy. 

You’ve been leaving BJ alone, but nobody’s giving you any answers, and desperate times have finally called for desperate measures. You and BJ aren’t supposed to be able to access each other’s rooms, but early on in your friendship you gave each other your override access codes without telling anyone, just in case there was ever an emergency. Potter never knew about it, and hopefully he never will. 

You punch in the code to his quarters and wait as the computer verifies your admission. The door slides open and lets loose a wave of hot dry air. The air inside is dim and smoky, and you are almost bowled over by the smell of heavy incense, the kind that’s only ever present when BJ is in deep meditation, usually during or after a personal crisis. You swallow deeply. None of this bodes well at all. 

“Beej?” you call tentatively as you step into the dim room, the door sliding shut behind you. “Hello?” 

“You shouldn’t be here,” BJ says, suddenly standing only two steps in front of you. His expression is inscrutable, especially in the hazy atmosphere.

“Yeah, but I’m a rebel so here I am anyway,” you say, taken aback at how quickly and silently he moved. You remember that Vulcan speed and strength are more than double typical human rates, and that BJ, while half Vulcan, shares more of their physiology than yours. “I haven’t seen you around since what happened in the transporter room. Is everything okay?” 

“Why did you come here?” BJ asks, stepping a bit closer so you’re pinned against the wall separating your cabins. 

“Oh, boredom mostly,” you offer, your voice coming out just a bit breathless. “Have you been eating? You know, I’ve got some chocolate in my room, if you wanted some. We haven’t gotten bagged together in a while.” 

BJ’s hands close tight around your wrists, pinning them against the wall. You inhale sharply as BJ steps even closer, so your bodies are aligned against each other. 

“Benjamin Franklin Hawkeye Pierce,” BJ croons in your ear. “So quick to offer your food and your socks and your opinions. I wonder what other intimacies you would offer if I asked,” he breathes as your toes curl in your regulation boots. 

“Which ones did you want?” you answer, wow, so stupidly, so incredibly stupidly. BJ smiles at you, his expression almost wolfish, and you shiver. It feels like you’re in a daze, like you’ve entered a mirror universe where BJ looks and talks even more like a pinup holo than usual.

“I’ll let you know,” he says before dipping his head to your throat and pressing his lips against the skin there. You startle in his grip and he uses that to press in even further, so he’s practically between your legs. His mouth opens on your neck and you hum in pleasure, letting the sensation carry you for a second before you realize what exactly is happening. 

“Wait, Beej, hold on,” you say breathlessly. He doesn’t give any sign of having heard you, and your breath starts to quicken in a not-so-fun way. “Beej, seriously.” His hands tighten on your wrists. “BJ, stop!” 

In a second, he’s across the room. You lean back against the wall and catch your breath, your chest heaving. You look over at him where he’s backed against the opposite wall, his eyes wide and horrified. 

“Hawk,” he rasps, his voice so torn up it almost hurts to hear. “Oh God, Hawkeye, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you? How bad is it?” 

You look down at your wrists where you’re rubbing them. There might be some slight bruising but they don’t hurt, at least not the way he’s asking. “No, I’m fine. You stopped in time.” 

BJ makes to step towards you before stopping and clenching his fists, his jaw tight. He looks deliberately away from you and takes deep measured breaths, schooling his face into a mask of stoicism. 

“You need to leave, right now,” he says, his voice deathly calm. “It’s not safe for you in here, I don’t know what you were thinking.” 

“I was worried about you,” you respond, stung. Did BJ just try to have sex with you? None of this is making any sense. “You’ve been acting strangely for a week now, but everybody’s pretending that nothing’s wrong. This isn’t normal, BJ.” 

“Hawk,” BJ starts, his voice forbidding. 

“I’m a doctor, you know, I could help you if you told me how. Not to mention, I’m your best friend, remember? We’re supposed to be a team.” 

“Hawkeye-” BJ interjects, his voice sharp now. 

“Just let me help you, please, I can help you if you tell me-” 

“Enough!” BJ shouts, still not looking at you. You flinch and see guilt flash across his face. He visibly restrains himself, hiding his emotions under that implacable mask again. “Hawkeye, I told you once, don’t make me repeat myself again. Get out now before we both regret it.” 

You stare at him, taking note of his tensed muscles, the way his teeth seem to grind against each other, the throbbing vein at his temple. 

“Okay, BJ,” you say in the soothing voice you use with anxious patients. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed it. I’m leaving now.” BJ reaches towards you like he’s trying to stop you before he wrestles his arm back firmly to his side. 

“That’s good,” BJ sighs, sounding like it’s anything but. “That’s good.” You watch him sink back onto his meditation mat, before you turn and walk back into your room, the door locking behind you.

As soon as you’re out of the room you go to your stash of gin and fix yourself a stiff drink, before you down it completely. 

_What in the hell was that all about?_ You pull out your communicator and call Radar. 

“What’s up, Hawkeye?” 

“Radar, I need you to bring me everything we have about Vulcan physiology and medicine,” you order. 

“Uh, sorry, Hawkeye, but those records have been sealed,” Radar responds. You blink. 

“What? What do you mean those records have been sealed? Since when?” 

“Since three days ago,” Radar responds guiltily. This can’t be a coincidence. 

“Who sealed them?” you ask, outraged. 

“The only other Vulcan on the ship,” Radar responds. You hang up and begin to seethe. 

*

“Charles,” you thunder as you step into the medbay. “What the hell is with all the sealed files?” You glare at Charles’ pointy ears and receding hairline as he doesn’t even look up from his reports in acknowledgement. 

“I have no idea what you are talking about, Pierce, but I would really prefer it if you did not yell quite so loudly in the post-operative ward. Some of these patients would actually like to recover.” 

As a full Vulcan raised on the homeworld, Charles subscribes to the more rigid practices of Vulcan culture that BJ never fully embraced, like dropping contractions, clinging to semantics, and looking down on every other race as inferior. However, his strict Vulcan upbringing also means he is fundamentally opposed to lying, something you are more than willing to use against him. 

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” you hiss, getting into his face. “You sealed all the Vulcan medical records because you and BJ are keeping secrets from me.” 

“Yes, as is my wont as the specialist in Vulcan physiology on this miserable little craft,” Charles responds, standing up and heading towards his office. 

“What’s wrong with him, Charles? You have to know or you wouldn’t be hiding it from me.” Charles picks a clipboard off of his desk and moves to exit his office. You glance at the page as he gets closer and see Hunnicutt written in bold near the top. 

“My sincerest apologies, Pierce, but I am limited by something called doctor-patient confidentiality. I do not know if they taught you about that on whatever backwater planet you learned to practice medicine, but I assure you it is perfectly binding,” Charles says, swanning by you. You grind your teeth together and pursue him. 

“Well, consider me a consulting physician on his case then, Doctor Winchester,” you say, making a grab for the clipboard. 

“You cannot just add yourself to his case because you want to be on it, you ignoramus,” he sneers, holding it out of your reach. 

“Oh yeah? Well, considering that this ignoramus is your Chief Surgeon, I think I can do whatever the hell I want,” you snap, making another lunge at the clipboard. Charles holds it out of your reach yet again. 

“If you would like to pull rank, by all means, see Colonel Potter, but I will not break confidentiality, not even for someone I respect as little as I do Hunnicutt.” 

“What is it, some kind of Vulcan secret shame? It’s not like I’m gonna tell anybody, I would never do that to BJ.” 

“Pierce, drop it,” Charles says, but something in his eyes makes you wonder if even he agrees with keeping this from you. 

You step back and peer at him, wondering what exactly is going on in his head right now. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” you ask finally. “It’s really bad. He’s not letting anyone say anything because he’s scared, right? So are you, even though you won’t admit it.” 

Charles looks away from you and noticeably does not deny it. 

“Charles,” you say, catching his eyes. You attempt to force all the sincerity you have in your body into your next words. “He’s my best friend and this is killing him. I’m not coming to you as a doctor or as your superior, I’m coming to you as someone who cares about him. Who loves him. Please, please tell me what’s wrong.” 

Charles stares at you, visibly attempting to resist your groveling before he rolls his eyes and submits. You cheer internally, but keep your face looking as pathetic as possible so he doesn’t change his mind. 

“Alright, but only because I do genuinely think Hunnicutt is in the wrong for keeping this from you,” Charles says, ushering you back into his office. “If anyone asks, you pulled rank and threatened me with a position on one of the colonies.” 

“Charles, I bent your arm so far behind your back it broke, I’ll swear to it in court, just tell me what’s going on here.” 

He hands you the clipboard and you skim through it, phrases like _mating drive_ and _three to five days_ and _mood swings, irrationality, possessive behavior_ flashing through your mind. 

“So, what, Vulcans go through heat or something?” you ask. Charles sneers at you, his top lip curling. 

“It is called Pon Farr, it is a very delicate subject, and one you should take great care in speaking about to me when I am doing you a favor,” Charles says pointedly and you nod, unwilling to fight this particular battle when you have so much to lose in the war. 

“Okay, then give me some context here, what am I working with?” 

“Vulcans were not always the logically superior beings that we are now. We used to be a warlike society, oriented around conquest and violence, thanks to the evolutionary viability of aggression, until a Vulcan named Surak began to advocate for a society ordered by logic. Our mating drives and rituals were similarly violent, and while the rest of our culture shifted to Surak’s teachings,  
to quell our violent urges, Pon Farr stayed the same. 

“Vulcans begin our Pon Farr cycles in our adulthood, and continue to have them every seven years until death. First we experience overwhelming agitation and possessive behavior, which, over the course of a week, escalates into mindless lust or killing rage, depending on the person in front of us. The afflicted stop eating, drinking or sleeping, wasting away until the fever passes. It is a great shame on Vulcan and not one that is typically discussed with outsiders such as yourself.” 

“How do we stop it?” 

“It is a mating drive, Pierce, how do you think you stop it?” Charles sneers. 

“Wait, so you’re telling me that BJ is killing himself in his room when all he has to do is make the beast with two backs to end this?” you ask incredulously. Charles scoffs at you. 

“How very like you reduce the phenomenon to the most crass terms possible,” Charles sneers. “And no, it is not that simple. You could not understand this as a psi-null, but Pon Farr requires not just compatibility with the body, but also with the mind. You remember that Vulcans are touch-telepaths, correct?” 

“How could I forget, BJ used that to cheat me at poker for two months straight.” Hawkeye knew BJ wasn’t just playing footsie, he had just lived in hope until he saw all his hard-earned Cardassian ale slip into BJ’s cabin, never to be seen again. 

“Well, that is only one of the ways we manifest our telepathy. Another is our ability to form lasting mental bonds that endure across time and space. In order to ensure that no Vulcan is caught in the throes of Pon Farr without a mate, Vulcan children are bonded to each other and grow up knowing each other’s minds. The closest analogue to it on Terra is an early and very long engagement.” 

“So that’s why we’re going to Vulcan,” you say. “Peg is there and she’ll be able to help him.” You swallow down the instinctive misery that rises in your throat whenever you think about BJ’s fiancé, the life BJ plans to start with her after this tour. 

“Ostensibly, yes,” Charles says. 

“Ostensibly?” you prompt. 

“Hunnicutt’s biology is unique,” he states. “A Vulcan-Terran hybrid has never undergone Pon Farr before. Usually, both bondmates feel the throes of Pon Farr at the same time, to prepare them for the other. In this case, Peg claims she has not felt a single symptom, which bodes poorly for their compatibility.” 

“What happens if BJ doesn’t spend Pon Farr with a compatible partner?” you ask, a sense of foreboding filling you, swamping you. Charles swallows heavily. 

“Total insanity, in the best case,” he begins. “Death, most likely.” 

“So what can we do now?” you ask, feeling sick to your stomach.

“Wait,” Charles says. A nurse walks up to Charles and asks him for something, and he follows her towards one of the patient beds, leaving you alone with your fears. 

*

You spend delta shift in post-op, checking in on patients. The ship is scheduled to arrive at Vulcan tomorrow, but you don’t really know how to pass the time until then. You’d usually spend it with BJ, playing chess or drinking, or just reading a novel in his quarters as he typed his reports or perused medical journals. Now you’re at wits end on a deserted observation deck, staring at the stars as they pass by. 

Your communicator flares on. 

“Hawkeye?” BJ asks. You reach for it so fast you almost drop it on the ground. 

“Beej?” you ask. “Is everything okay? How are you? Do you need anything?” 

“I’m fine, Hawkeye,” he says, sounding exhausted. 

“You sound like you’ve been up for too long,” you say. 

“I can’t sleep,” he admits, his voice crackling. “The worst of the fever takes me when I sleep. I’ve been trying to sit in healing trances, but they’re getting flimsier and flimsier.”

“I’m sorry,” you say, because this sounds miserable. 

“It’s not all bad. I have periods of lucidity, though they’re getting shorter,” BJ says. “The fever comes in waves, but I’m not a mindless beast.” _yet_ Hawkeye hears. 

“It’ll all be okay soon,” you reassure him. “We’ll get to Vulcan and someone will know what to do.” 

BJ doesn’t say anything for the longest time. 

“Beej, are you still-“ 

“I’m so sorry, Hawkeye,” BJ says miserably. “I’ve been terrible to you, I know that, and I’d do anything to take it all back.” 

“It’s alright,” you say. 

“It’s not,” BJ insists. “I can’t explain it, but-“ 

“You don’t need to explain anything to me,” you preempt him. “Something’s clearly wrong, but we’re going to fix it, I promise. We’re okay, BJ.” 

“Okay,” BJ says, his voice small and relieved. “Hawkeye?” 

“Yeah?” 

“I’ve really missed you,” he says, his voice even smaller. 

“I miss you too, Beej. I don’t know what to do with myself without you. I’ve started talking to the plants in the botany lab, but they just don’t have your wit.” 

“I’ve tried playing solitaire, but it’s just not the same without your running commentary,” BJ says and you laugh. 

“You should watch a holo or something. There’s a bunch of old classics that got added to the holodeck, and I think Klinger brought a lot from the last time they tried to escape on shore leave.” 

“I’d prefer to stay on the line with you, if that’s all right,” BJ says. You smile helplessly at the vacuum of space, relentlessly charmed by your best friend. 

“Alright, but I charge half a pastry ration for every minute.” 

“Half a ration? That’s practically highway robbery,” BJ yelps. “Can I negotiate you down to a sip of Cardassian ale?” 

“You mean the ale you cheated from me?” 

“I prefer the word appropriated, it feels so much more appropriate for this context.” 

“BJ, if there’s anything I admire about you, it’s your audacity.” 

“That and my debonair charm,” he supplies. 

“You’re a debonair chump,” you retort. 

“Did you mean a debonair champ?” 

“You’re despicable,” you say, and he laughs. “No really, whoever last told you you were funny was out of their mind.” 

“You were the last person to call me funny,” BJ points out. 

“So I’m out of my mind, what about it?” 

“If you’re not in your mind, where are you?” BJ asks. 

“With you, of course,” you respond, before you think better of it. You want to slam your head against the window glass. 

“If only,” BJ says, his voice suddenly strained. You freeze. “This may not have been a good idea.” 

“What?” you ask. The communicator clicks off, and you are once again alone on the observation deck.

*

The next day, Charles and BJ beam down to Vulcan early in Alpha shift, while you’re stuck in post-op. You can tell they're planning to ice you out of this whole process, but you didn’t get the award for most likely to cause trouble in Starfleet three years running because you take administrative decisions lying down. 

“Colonel, I need to talk to you,” you say, bursting into Potter’s office. 

“You can come along, Pierce,” Potter starts but you’re on a roll. 

“I need to be on planet with them, Charles may be BJ’s doctor, but I’m his best friend on this boat and I deserve- wait what?” 

“I said, you can come along, I just got off the phone with Vulcan High Command. They approved your knowledge of the situation.” 

“Really? Why?” 

“Beats me, but Charles insisted. Made a really big deal about it too. He even called in that clan member he has on the council.” 

“Charles insisted? Why would he insist on me being there?” you ask, beyond perplexed. 

“I guess we’ll find out planetside,” Potter says, gesturing at you to leave his office. “Radar, I know you’re listening in, you can come along too.” 

“Glad to hear it, sir,” Radar says behind the door. “I’ll get our transport set up.” 

“Good man,” Potter says. “Alright, Pierce, let’s move it,” he says, and you do, unwilling to look a gift horse-aficionado in the mouth. 

You beam down to Vulcan, and the hot dry air of the desert planet immediately overwhelms you. Radar remembered to give you your oxygen shots before you went down, but even with them, you still feel a bit lightheaded.

You look up into the dusty orange sky, the bright sun beating down on your skin and feel a flicker of recognition ring through you. Why would you dream of Vulcan?

A group of stern-faced Vulcans escorts you to a massive building with cavernous hallways, where you encounter Charles and BJ, both dressed in traditional Vulcan ceremonial robes. 

“Colonel,” Charles says, raising his hand in the ta’al. 

“Winchester. What’s the sitrep?” 

“Military jargon aside, we are holding steady for the next few hours.”

“BJ?” you ask. “Everything okay?” 

“Yes,” he responds, looking deliberately away from you. “I visited a mind healer who was able to erect a temporary barrier between me and the _plak tow_. It should hold until we decide what can be done.” 

“Plak tow?” you mouth to Radar. 

“Blood fever,” Radar supplies under his breath. You widen your eyes and nod. 

“Where’s your fiance? Isn’t she kinda critical to all of this?” you ask. 

“My bond-mate is on her way,” BJ says, still not looking at you. You step towards him, but he steps back from you, keeping a measured distance. “It would be better if you weren’t so close to me,” BJ states carefully. You narrow your eyes at him and notice the beads of sweat on his face, the way his hands are held preternaturally still at his sides. 

“The mental barrier isn’t working too well, is it?” you ask. BJ closes his eyes and breathes very deliberately through his nose. “Can I help?” 

“You can keep your distance,” BJ says cooly, and you flinch, stepping backwards a few feet. BJ doesn’t seem to notice your distress, too focused on keeping calm. 

Peg arrives right then, walking into the hall with brisk steps. She looks beautiful in an icy way, her blonde hair pin straight and her formal robes giving her a formidable silhouette. BJ doesn’t look unhappy to see her, but he doesn’t look particularly relieved either. 

“Colonel,” she says, raising the ta’al to greet Potter. 

“How do you do,” Potter says in response. 

She nods at the rest of you as well before getting straight to business, striding to BJ and placing her hands on his forehead. You hold your breath. 

After a long beat, she steps back and removes her hands from his temples. 

“I cannot undergo Pon Farr with him,” she says in a flat tone.

“What? Why not?” you cry, outraged. “He’ll die without you, how could you be so heartless?” 

“I am not without a heart, Benjamin Pierce,” Peg responds coolly. “Were I able to satisfy my bondmate’s needs, I would. That is my duty. However, I am not able, and thus cannot volunteer.” 

“What do you mean you can’t satisfy his needs, that’s the whole point of this bond, isn’t it?” you ask, looking between her and BJ wildly. 

“Yes, that was the point of our bond. However, BJ has since bonded with someone else and the intensity of that mental link has thoroughly eroded our engagement. Were I to attempt to undergo Pon Farr with him, he would almost certainly attempt to kill me for taking the place of his true mate.” 

BJ doesn’t even pretend to look surprised. 

“You knew about this?” you ask BJ. 

“I hoped it wasn’t true,” BJ sighs. His hands are trembling. He doesn’t have a lot of time. 

“Who did you bond to?” you ask. “If we can find them fast enough, maybe they can get here in time.” 

“Leave it, Hawkeye,” BJ says. “They don’t want this.” 

“How could you possibly know that? Did you ask them?” 

“They don’t know about the bond,” BJ says. “It formed spontaneously, even I didn’t know about it until a few days ago. It would be asking too much. I’ll endure the fever alone in meditation. Pon Farr will pass.” 

“Oh yeah? How many Vulcans have survived Pon Farr without a compatible partner?” you ask Charles. Charles shakes his head grimly. Shit.

“I have unique biology thanks to my Terran mother-” BJ starts. 

“You’re betting on maybe not dying because you're part human? BJ, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth, and I was with you when you got so trashed you tried to dance with Mulcahy’s petunias.” 

Charles says something in Vulcan that you don’t understand, and BJ hisses something back, anger coming to his face alarmingly easily. 

“What am I missing here?” you ask Charles. 

“BJ is understating the importance of the spontaneous bond that developed,” Charles begins. 

“Charles, if you don’t shut your mouth, I will shut it for you,” BJ warns, his voice dangerously low. Charles looks at you imploringly and you catch on after a second. 

“Charles, as your Chief Surgeon, you have an obligation to inform me about any salient details involving the medical history of one of my patients,” you say. 

“I am not your patient,” BJ retorts. 

“You are now, I’m taking over your case, isn’t that right, Charles?” 

“BJ has formed a t'hy'la bond,” Charles says. 

“You son of a bitch,” BJ breathes. “May le-matya feast upon your corpse.” 

“T'hy'la, what’s t'hy'la?” you ask. 

“It is one of the oldest and strongest bonds in Vulcan society,” Peg says, jumping in. “It is the warrior bond, forged between only the most compatible of katras. BJ shouldn’t have been able to form such a bond with an outsider, but his aberrant Terran heritage apparently allows such a match.” 

“Watch who you call aberrant,” you say in a warning tone, bristling a bit. You’ve heard too many Vulcans say too many shitty things about BJ to take that lying down. 

“I did not intend any offense,” Peg clarifies. “BJ’s biology is rare. This is a unique situation.” 

“Enough,” BJ says. “The point is moot. Terrans are not biologically or mentally equipped to handle Pon Farr. If we attempted this, I could kill him-” 

“Terran? He? BJ, just tell me who it is,” you say, something horrible sinking in your gullet. God, could it be someone on the ship? Someone BJ has secretly fallen so deeply in love with it ruined his engagement, someone BJ hasn’t told you about, someone who _isn’t you?_

“Hawkeye,” BJ says, his voice trembling with exertion. “Leave it alone.” 

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Potter asks. You look at him in surprise. He hasn’t spoken much this entire conversation, but he’s been paying attention just as well as you have. “You bonded with Hawkeye.” 

You stare wide-eyed at BJ as he does not deny it. You turn to Charles who nods once. 

“Oh god,” Radar says, and then people start talking. 

“I am not going to risk two of my best surgeons on this, are you sure there’s nothing we can do-” Potter starts.

“Wow, I did not see this coming,” Radar breathes. 

“No, Colonel, there’s nothing we can-” Peg begins. 

“I am not going to let any of you put Hawkeye in danger,” BJ states.

“That decision may well cost you your life,” Charles retorts. 

“This is gonna go so bad,” Radar says. 

“The ways of Pon Farr are clear,” Peg states. 

“I don’t care if it costs me my life, I am not going to-” 

“You’re telling me nobody’s found a way to reverse-” 

“Oh, this is already going so bad-” 

“You cannot afford to be making decisions like-” 

“Colonel, with all due respect, our culture has-” 

“If you think for a second you can stop me-” 

“I’ll do it,” you say. Nobody listens to you, still talking.

“Who is talking about stopping you, your life will stop-” 

“Well, then get an expert in the-” 

“I said, I’ll do it,” you shout. Everyone shuts up and stares at you, BJ with the widest eyes of all of them. “Just so I’m clear, all I have to do is have sex with him for the next three to five business days?” 

“You would also be married to him under Vulcan law,” Charles points out. 

“Right, but will there be any ritual bloodletting, loss of limb, monetary price?” 

“No, just the sex marathon and eternal soulbond,” Radar says, and Potter gives him a chastening look. 

“Okay, when do we start? Is there a ceremony or something or do we just get to business?” you ask, rubbing your hands together. Everyone continues to blink at you. “I’m sorry, am I missing something? Is BJ dying or not?” 

“Well, yes, technically, he is-” Charles begins. 

“And I’m compatible with him?” you prompt. “I satisfy the conditions of Pon Farr? Because we’re t'hy'la?” 

“Yes,” Peg confirms, surprisingly. “You satisfy all conditions. This would be a logical match.” 

“Then what are we waiting for?” you demand. 

“Hawkeye, you’re not thinking this through,” BJ says hoarsely. “Even if you can make it through the entire fever with me, this isn’t like a Terran marriage, where two spouses can be separated by legal contracts. We would be bonded at the molecular level. I would have access to your thoughts, and you to mine. If you ever wanted to dissolve the bond, neither of us would ever fully recover.” 

“God, it’s like nobody’s listening to me,” you say, your voice tightening and raising in volume. “I know all of this already! But we don’t have any other options, and I am not letting you die, so either you and I find somewhere to be alone in the next fifteen minutes, or we do this right here right now with everyone watching.” 

“Then the matter is settled,” Peg says, taking control of the situation. “I will escort you to your chambers. Your colleagues are welcome to return to the ship. Live long and prosper, Colonel.” With that she turns and walks down the hall. BJ follows, albeit with obvious trepidation in his walk. 

“Pierce,” Potter says. You turn. “Be careful.” 

“He’s not gonna hurt me,” you say, half to him and half to BJ, who is almost down the hall by now, following Peg closely. 

“Pierce, hang back for a second,” Charles says, reaching into his medical bag and rustling through it. 

“What?” you ask, looking anxiously at Peg and BJ as they wait for you. 

“BJ was right to express concerns about your physiology, but his Terran genetics should mitigate the severity of the fever. You will not die, but you will become deeply dehydrated and malnourished if you do not take these shots,” he says, handing you the bag. 

“Which shots?” you ask, looking into the bag. 

“These,” Charles responds, jabbing at your upper arm with three hyposprays at once, making you howl with pain. “That ought to do,” he says, looking apprehensively at BJ, who immediately started making his way to you when you cried out. 

“You’re a sick son of a bitch, Charles,” you say, rubbing at your arm. 

“Godspeed, Pierce,” Charles says, grabbing the bag from you and hoofing it back to where Potter and Radar are waiting for transport. 

“He hurt you,” BJ says furiously, when he gets to your side, looking at your arm. “I’ll kill him,” he says in a matter of fact voice, staring at Charles like a predator looks at a prey. 

“Hey, wait a second, it’s all fine,” you say. You take a risk and grab his arm, hoping to keep his attention. He locks his gaze on you, Charles forgotten, and you take the opportunity to step into his personal space. “Peg’s waiting for us, come on,” you say, urging him to move. Slowly, reluctantly, he lets you lead him down the hall. 

*

Peg deposits you in some spare quarters, a fairly spartan setup with an attached bathroom and massive bed. You poke through it nervously, noting a wide array of lubricants and contraceptives in the bedside table drawer and a small closet full of fresh bed linens. 

“Nice digs,” you say, looking at the bath. “I wonder how often they clean. You gotta think that these rooms get some use, but most bondmates probably have their own houses, I guess.” 

BJ is silent in the main room, standing tense and still. You stand to his side. He probably hasn’t let the mental shield down, too afraid of what he’ll do. That’s okay. If there’s one thing you know how to do, it’s bait BJ. 

“So,” you say in a leading tone. “We’re t'hy'la, huh?” 

BJ nods slightly. 

“I don’t think I completely understood Peg’s description. She said the word katra?” 

“Katras are Vulcan equivalent of souls,” BJ says in a very controlled voice. 

“So, what, we have the soulmate bond?” you ask jokingly. He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t even move at all. “Oh my god, we have the soulmate bond.” You feel almost giddy with the knowledge. His culture just confirmed something you hadn’t even thought to hope for. 

“I didn’t mean to do this to you,” BJ says in a rush, which kind of stings a little bit, but you understand. He thought he was engaged. It would probably upset you too if you were engaged and suddenly you weren’t and also you were about to die and to not die you had to sleep with someone you didn’t want to sleep with. 

“Do you know when it happened?” you ask. BJ nods. 

“I spent some time in meditation trying to trace the source. It was early, two weeks after we met, if you remember.” His voice is quiet, almost repentant. 

_Two weeks in. Your dream._ “You showed me how Vulcans- You kissed me,” you say. BJ nods guiltily. “That’s all it takes to start a bond?” 

“Typically, no,” he says, staring down at his boots. 

“We’re just special then, huh?” He nods shortly. “You don’t have to look so miserable about it,” you say testily. “I get that I wasn’t your first choice, but at least you’re not gonna be dead in a week.” 

“You think that’s my problem?” BJ asks incredulously, his control snapping for the first time so far. “Are you kidding?” 

“Then what’s the big deal?” you ask. 

“I’m holding you hostage, is the big deal,” BJ cries. “I know you, Hawkeye, you’d lie about wanting this in a heartbeat if that’s what it took to keep me alive. You don’t think you have a choice here, which means you don’t have one at all.” 

“That’s not true,” you say, amazed at his ability to feel guilty for things he hasn’t even done. “I’m not a kid, Beej, I have a better grasp of the consequences than you’re giving me credit for here. I wouldn’t do this with just anyone, you know?” You reach out and catch his hand in yours, arranging your fingers against his in a Vulcan kiss, the way he showed you when all this started in the first place. He gasps a bit, his eyes snapping shut. 

“I mean, the way I see it, our bond, this t'hy'la thing, it exists for a reason,” you coax softly, soothingly. “We fit together, don’t we? We did from the very beginning. You noticed, so did I, so did everyone. It’s always you and me, Beej, it’s always going to be you and me.” He nods slowly, running his thumb over the back of your hand, letting the tension seep out of him. 

You think deliberately about how much you want him, how many times you’ve thought about touching him, about him touching you, trying to project the thoughts through your skin into his. He makes a low guttural sound under his breath, and when he opens his eyes, his pupils have devoured his irises. There’s a naked hunger on his face that sends an answering thrill up your spine. 

“Hawkeye,” he breathes, reaching out to cradle your cheek in one of his big hands. “Tell me you want this. I couldn’t bear it if this was just an obligation to you.” 

“I want this,” you say immediately, because if there is anything you want in the whole galaxy, it’s this, BJ desperate for you, BJ promising he’ll never leave you. He searches your eyes for a long moment, and then his lips are on yours and you’re finally, finally! kissing him. 

He strips you out of your clothes with mindbending efficiency, walking you backwards towards the bed. You fall back onto it and watch as he tears off his robes, standing suddenly and gloriously nude in front of you, his golden skin flushed slightly green. You reach out to him, the distance between you suddenly unbearable, and he falls into you, pressing you down into the plush mattress and licking into your mouth. 

The feeling of your naked bodies against each other immediately overwhelms you, and you get the feeling he can tell from the vague smugness he exudes. You break away from his mouth, trailing your lips up his neck to nibble on the tip of one of his lovely pointy ears, and he goes emerald, staring down at you with big dark eyes. 

“You really want me,” he says in disbelief, tracing your lips with his index finger. You part your lips, letting his finger rest just inside your mouth. He shivers above you, and you take the opportunity to nip gently at the end of the digit. “God, Hawkeye, you’re going to be the death of me.” 

“That’s the spirit,” you say cheerfully, reaching to the bedside table to grab one of the lubricants at random and throw it at his chest. He catches it with his insane reflexes before parsing what it is, but as soon as he reads the label, he goes very still. “Beej, enough,” you say, starting to get pissed off.

“Enough what?” he asks, concerned enough to draw back, which is the opposite of what you wanted. 

“Enough holding back,” you say, jostling him with your leg. “I said I wanted you, now get over here and give me what I want.” 

So he does.

You had worried for maybe a second that he might rush through preparation in his haste to fulfill the bond, but that was before you remembered how sensitive Vulcan fingers were. 

“God dammit, BJ, will you get inside me already?” you curse, writhing and kicking at him.

“I already am,” he says, blissed out on touch alone, his long elegant fingers doing some truly obscene things to you. 

“You pedantic son of a bitch, you know that’s not what I meant,” you pant. “What are you waiting for?” 

“I’ll know it when I hear it,” he says, smirking, his blue irises almost invisible against the cavernous black of his pupils. 

“God, I’ve had multiple orgasms in the time it takes for you to finish foreplay,” you complain. BJ’s fingers still. 

“Try not to think of your previous sexual partners right now,” BJ says, a growling possessiveness curling around his words. You smirk. 

“Is that what it’s gonna take for you to get up here? Imagining what other people have done to me before? Letting you see it through my skin?” you taunt, and now he’s withdrawn entirely, leaving you empty and just a little bit pissed off. “Come on,” you urge, jostling him with your ankle. 

“Someone’s eager,” he notes, holding your legs apart but otherwise not touching you at all. “Beg.” 

“What?” you say, not sure if you heard him right. 

“You heard me. Ask me nicely,” he says, steel in his eyes. 

“I thought you were supposed to the raving sex maniac right now,” you gasp in disbelief. Luckily, you lost any sense of shame or pride at least thirty minutes ago. “Please, BJ, please, for the love of Surak and all his goddamn disciples, will you please fucking fuck me?” you ask, and finally he moves, pressing into you slowly but surely. When he finally bottoms out, it’s as much a relief as any of the other million emotions flooding through you. 

You see something hazy and uncontrolled fill BJ’s eyes as he looks down at you, the places where your bodies meet and separate. “Hawk,” he breathes, tracing your cheekbone with his thumb. 

“Yeah,” you say, breathless at the feeling of him in you, invading you, in union with you. “Me too,” you say, and he dips his head to mouth at your neck, irritating the skin enough to leave a mark. You drag your hand up his spine and hitch your thigh up against his hip. “Move, now.” 

He follows orders. You wrap yourself around him, clinging to him as he rolls into you like a wave on the shore, sending sparks flying behind your eyelids. You’ve dreamed of this more times than you can count, touched yourself guiltily to the idea, to the imagined sensation of him in you, above you, around you, but the reality feels orders of magnitude more intense than anything conjured in those fevered nights alone in your bunk. He is everything to you, your whole world wrapped in golden skin, the closest thing to eternity that you have ever wanted. 

“Hawkeye, I need you,” he groans, mouthing at your neck, and you pull back to look at him. “Oh, Hawkeye, beautiful, let me in darling, please let me in.” 

“Anything,” you promise, not quite knowing what you’re promising, but trusting him to know what he’s doing. He drags his hands up your back and around so he’s cradling your face in his hands, his thumbs at your temples. 

“Do what I do, say what I say,” he instructs, and you match him, placing your fingers at his temples. “My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts,” he starts. 

“My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts,” you reply, and then you are tumbling into BJ, diving into the very core of his being, a warm coil of blue and green and gold that wraps around you, cradling you in love and light. 

BJ’s mind is gorgeous, alien and achingly familiar at the same time. You luxuriate in it, spreading to touch as much of it as you can, and you feel joy and an all-consuming devotion ripple through his mind in response. You dip into his memories, slip sliding along his chronology as he rifles through you as well. You see him editing his behavior against cruelty of Terran children growing up, see him draw into himself in the face of a distant father and a strict mother, and you wedge yourself into each of his memories, so he never has to be alone in them again. 

As he parses through your own history, you sense his outrage at how many people left you before he found you, his satisfaction at how you’ll never be with any of them again, now that you’re _his_. You feel him echoing through all of your guilty covetous thoughts, moments when you wanted him so desperately you couldn’t let yourself touch him for fear that he’d read your thoughts through your skin, for fear that he’d see you for who you were, your heart splayed open in front of him. That fear feels almost laughable now, with him singing through those memories, shouting _me too, I loved you too,_ at each one. 

You reach into the colors and see yourself through what must be BJ’s eyes, see yourself laughing and smiling and ranting and raving and the idea that someone could look at you and think you were as beautiful as BJ does is so shocking you can feel him react to your surprise with even more surprise in a strange feedback loop of emotion. 

_Beloved,_ BJ’s mind echoes around you, and you shudder in pleasure as BJ soothes you. _Hawkeye, my beloved, never leave me,_ you hear and you rejoice, sending pulses of joy through what you now understand to be your bond, your marriage bond. 

_Never! Not for the rest of my life,_ you respond, feeling words come unbidden to you. _Parted from me, and never parted. Never and always touching and touched._

_Parted from me, and never parted. Never and always touching and touched,_ BJ echoes. There’s a brief moment of suspension. You feel something bright and wild and hungry set fire to your mind, and you become vaguely aware of your body again, clutching at BJ’s shoulders and writhing desperately against him. 

Then, your senses completely white out as pleasure explodes from the base of your spinal cord through your entire being, body and soul, spiraling and catching BJ in it, or maybe he caught you in it because now you can feel his pleasure like twin neutron stars going supernova in your minds, or is it your shared mind, you can’t tell anymore. You lose yourself in static, your consciousness reverberating between your body and his mind like a plucked harp string. 

When you come to, you are still cradling each other’s heads in your hands. You can feel BJ now, tucked under your skin like a bruise. 

“That was something else,” you whisper. BJ nods. 

“And we haven’t even started yet,” he says, shifting so he’s more securely on top of you. You blink at him. 

“We haven’t?” you ask, incredulous. 

“Are you tapping out?” he asks, ostensibly serious, though you can feel his teasing lilt under your tongue like it’s your own. You feel a feral smile spring to your lips, as a new wave of heat spills over you through the bond, setting you on fire again. 

“Come and get me, t’hy’la,” you say, trying out the word, and his eyes go wide and dark, before he crushes you to him, devouring you. 

The next several hours or days are a haze of skin and sweat. You leave dark green bruises up the inside of BJ’s thighs and he leaves matching marks on your throat and wrists, everywhere he can taste your pulse. He wakes you up with his teeth on your spine, and you roll him over onto the floor and ride him there as he clutches at you with greedy possessive hands. You bite his lower lip so hard he almost bleeds with it, and he throws you back down onto the bed and presses his tongue inside you until you’re tearing at the sheets, ripping them off the mattress. You dig your fingernails into his shoulders as he takes you on your back, and leave fingerprints on his hips and thighs as you return the favor, your minds trading the same insatiable desire back and forth.

By what is either the end of the first day or the beginning of the fourth, you are a mess of nerve endings and sensitized skin, acting on pure instinct to get closer. You can feel yourself flagging in comparison to BJ’s endless Vulcan stamina, but he doesn’t seem to mind, letting you lie back and bliss out while he does all the work. The bed is basically destroyed at this point, and you wonder idly if you're going to have to pay for damages. 

“You should not be thinking about that while I’m inside of you,” BJ says, annoyed. You smirk and refocus on the task at hand, reaching up to grope his chest and shoulders. 

“You shouldn’t be forming full sentences while you’re inside of me,” you retort, sticking out your tongue, and he laughs, leaning down to nip at your lips. You hum into the kiss, before you let your head flop back onto the bed. “We’re approaching the end, huh?” you ask, because this is starting to feel less like a burning inferno devouring you from the inside out, and more like very athletic sex. 

“Something like that,” BJ says, dropping his head to your shoulder as he continues to work himself into you with languid thrusts. 

“Well, let’s go out with a bang, shall we?” you say, and he laughs at you again. 

“Sure, as soon as you can move without help,” he teases, and you roll your eyes without debating the point because he is technically right. You arch into him anyway, and he pulls you into another kiss, this time more romantic than heated. When you both topple back over the edge, it’s almost an afterthought to the taste of him under your tongue, sweet and sharp like fresh fruit. 

Eventually, you can’t keep up anymore. You lay on your side, BJ spooned up behind you, as he works you both up one last time. “Just one more, Hawkeye, one more time, my love,” he whispers in your ear, and you nod dreamily, reaching back to hold his hip tight against you. When you finally fall, everything goes quiet and dark and lovely. BJ is everywhere around you. You let yourself drift into him, warm, safe and completely sated.

*

You wake up in BJ’s arms. This feels normal to you, except for the fact that you are not on a bed, and in fact are not touching the ground at all. 

“Beej?” you croak.

“Shh,” BJ hushes you. “It’s okay, Hawk, the worst is over. I’ve got you now, okay, I’m gonna take care of you.” 

“Mmrf,” you respond eloquently, snuggling into his fuzzy chest as he carries you to the bathroom and nudges the taps of the shower to turn them on. He sets you on your feet, but keeps his arms tight around you, supporting you as the hot water runs over your overworked muscles. You rest your head on his shoulder as he works soft soap into your hair and over your body, rinsing you off with big tender hands. 

He walks you out of the shower, toweling both of you down gently before taking you back to the main room, where you doze off watching him remake the bed with clean sheets. Then you’re back in bed, tucked into his chest under a soft blanket, his arms back around you. There’s something warm and contented curled up in the back of your mind, and you prod it mentally a few times, relishing the way it radiates a gentle peace in your thoughts, like a sleepy cat on a windowsill. 

“Knock it off, Hawk,” BJ says without opening his eyes and you prod it once more, experimentally, before dropping it and nuzzling your face into his chest. 

“Not so bad for our first Pon Farr,” you mumble sleepily. He tightens his arms around you. 

“It was perfect, Hawkeye. You were perfect,” he says, and you smile before tripping into restful oblivion with him. 

*

When you wake up next, you feel like you’ve been hit by a truck, but in a good way. You reach out to the other side of the bed, and panic a little bit when you don’t feel BJ next to you. 

“I’m right here, Hawk,” BJ says from your other side, and you flip over to see him fully dressed, perched on the edge of the bed with a thermos in hand. “I brought you some coffee.” 

You shuffle up the bed into a seated position before grabbing the thermos and taking a sip. It’s perfect, just hot enough with one cream and two sugars. It’s actual coffee too, not the usual replicator gristle. 

“Thanks,” you say, oddly shy. BJ just stares at you, contemplative. “Is it my bedhead?”

“Is what your bedhead?” BJ asks, his brow crinkling a bit. 

“Whatever it is that’s so fascinating about me,” you clarify. BJ smiles warmly.

“No,” he says. “Just can’t quite believe my eyes.” Something in the back of your head that isn’t quite you rumbles in smug satisfaction, and you grin involuntarily. 

“No regrets the morning after?” you ask, only half as a joke. In response, BJ takes the thermos out of your hands, and leans in for a good morning kiss that doesn’t end quite as chaste as it begins, thanks to your wandering hands. When he pulls back, he’s significantly more disheveled, and looking exceptionally pleased about it. 

“How about you?” he asks, handing you the thermos back. “You’ve never been the strongest proponent of marriage. Is wedded bliss everything you hoped it would be?” 

“Well, my husband brought me breakfast in bed, so I’m optimistic,” you say, grinning. “What’s the plan for the first day of our honeymoon?” 

“We’re due on the ship in an hour,” BJ reports. “You’re going to get a check-up to make sure you didn’t tear anything important, and then we’re due in post-op. Charles has been holding down the fort, and he’s pissed about it.” 

“How romantic,” you say dryly, putting the thermos on the bedside table and pulling him close by the front of his shirt. “I guess we’ll have to make the most of the time we have left together, huh?” 

“Guess so,” he breathes, before he seals your lips together. 

When you finally leave the room and head to transport landing to be beamed up, BJ has three new hickeys, and you are wearing a very smug smile. You tug at the bond in your head, and BJ grins at you like you’ve got a secret, reaching out and running two of his fingers along yours. You return the kiss, the bond purring between you as he wonders what drinks you should serve at the shipwide reception you’re about to throw. 

You love him so much you can barely breathe with it. 

“Alright, Radar,” BJ says into his communicator, echoing the sentiment back at you with a bright smile. “Beam us up.”

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't make any of that up, straight up the Star Trek canon is just naturally like that haha -- please let me know if you enjoyed! kudos and comments especially really keep me wanting to write for y'all :)


End file.
